You can win the rat race but you’re still a rat.
BANKSYGaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons – they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.
More Banksy Quotes
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If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
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When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.
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A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.
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It’s a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department.
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The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.
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Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.
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But there’s no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We’re not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it’s hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.
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Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it’s probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it.
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I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it.
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Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.
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I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said ‘that’s clever it’s an anagram of art’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.
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I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.
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I don’t believe in anything. I’m just here for the violence.
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All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?
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You don’t need planning permission to build castles in the sky
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